Harpullia frutescens
Harpullia frutescens, commonly known as dwarf harpullia, is a species of flowering plant in the family Sapindaceae, and is endemic to northern Queensland. It is a shrub with leaves divided into six to eight leaflets, white flowers with a pink tinge, and crimson capsules containing 2 seeds.
Description
Harpullia frutescens is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to, its young growth covered with downy hairs. Its leaves are paripinnate, long with 6 to 8 elliptic to lance shaped leaflets sometimes tapering to a point, long and wide on a winged petiole long. The flowers are strongly perfumed, borne in clusters of mostly 2 to 4 in upper leaf axils long, each flower on a slender, hairy peduncle up to long. The sepals are long and covered with downy hairs, the petals are white with a pink tinge, and long. There are 5 or 6 stamens, and the ovary covered with woolly hairs. The fruit is a laterally compressed, crimson capsule about long containing two shiny seeds, enclosed in a yellow, cup-shaped aril.
Taxonomy
Harpullia frutescens was first formally described in 1889 by Frederick Manson Bailey in a report on the Government Scientific Expedition to the Bellenden-Ker Range. The specific epithet means "becoming bushy".
Distribution and habitat
Dwarf harpullia is common in rainforest from Ayton to the Atherton Tableland area in North Queensland, usually in hilly country.